


Boston Nights

by wyrdGeometries



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-01-26 21:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1703774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrdGeometries/pseuds/wyrdGeometries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat Vantas is approached by a blind girl and a guy who hears the voices of the dead and decides to join them in their ghost-hunting. He ends up involved in a lot of supernatural shenanigans, but hey, everybody needs a hobby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nevermore

Right, so, here's the deal: in the twentyfirst year of what might generously be called my life, I met two strange people: a blind girl and a guy who could hear voices in static.

I also met other people, but these two in particular turned out to be important.

That's the thing, though. At the time I didn't know they were going to be important to me: he was just some asshole and she was just some blind chick I had a few lectures with. I had plenty of fellow students that made no impact on me, and I know for sure I'd met plenty of assholes in my time; hell, _I_ was an asshole, to be frank.

They were the ones that got me set on this path, though, and we changed the world, pompous as it sounds. Our own worlds if nobody else's.

But whatever, that's probably enough introspection. Bit of stage-setting to get out of the way then, I guess.

I was studying in Boston at the time. Not going to tell you the precise circumstances, as they're kind of a corporate secret nowadays, need-to-know and all that, but suffice it to say this all started in an auditorium early one morning in September to the droning voice of an American Literature professor. 

Shit, bit of biography before we move on, actually. I came out of New York, originally. I'd half-assed my way through life, and as a consequence most of my teachers had always considered me either lazy, stupid, or both. To be honest, I don't think I was that stupid, but I probably did have that special kind of entitlement only reasonably smart people manage to foster. The sort that makes you overestimate yourself and underestimate the challenges life is going to throw your way. The sort that gets you to make excuses for your failures and claim full responsibility for all your success.

I wasn't particularly interested in literature. I liked to read, but I wasn't a "reader", if you follow me? I wasn't going to study anything closely related to politics, though, mostly to spite my parents, both career politicians. And that's really all you need to know about my family life. 

I seem to remember the lecture was about Edgar Allan Poe, some grisly handful of poems or other. Take your pick from the anthologies, really. Anything he wrote is dark and moody enough to set the stage, but perhaps the Raven, popular though it may be, fits our story the best.

Anyway, I'd flopped down in a seat (we didn't really have 'usual seats', yet) and tried to finish the reading. I liked the rhythm of the lines and I enjoyed the subject matter: I was always a dark kid, not quite goth or emo, more Addams Family. Came with being raised in a mansion, I always thought. The words implied a larger world within the poem; the narrator was wracked with sorrow, and his entire room and his possessions came together to suggest the gloom of a man visited by the spirit world. 

I'd just gotten past the first couple of stanzas, when "suddenly there came a tapping" like a stick against the side of my seat. I didn't look up. I made a point of keeping to myself.

"Is someone sitting here?" Her voice was grating, weirdly hoarse but also high-pitched, and I felt my heckles rising. "I have been known to sit on people." She said, by way of a warning. 

I finally glanced at her and was about to say something rude when I spotted the cane. "Yeah." I said simply. 

She seemed to be weighing her options, then finally grinned a wide, unnerving grin.

"What?" I said, feeling uncomfortable.

"Do you ever use polysyllables?" 

I felt a flush creep into my cheeks, but then my annoyance at her grin got me back on my feet. 

I calculated my response. "Sometimes." I said.

She giggled - cackled, actually - and tapped her cane against my foot. "Scoot up, I want to sit here." 

"Sit somewhere else." I barked.

"See now, that was pretty rude." She nodded. "But on the other hand you just doubled your syllable count, so I'll let it slide. Scoot!"

I sighed and moved a seat to the left. 

"I'm Terezi Pyrope." She grinned in my direction after she was seated.

"Karkat." I said. "Karkat Vantas."

"Pretty weird name. Where do you get a name like that?"

"New York."

She had an expression like she was surprised, then giggled again. "Do you always talk like this?" 

"How?" I asked.

She seemed to consider for a moment. "Tersely."

"I can ramble when I have to." I said, trying to read.

"I rather doubt that." She leaned on the little folding table you could use to write notes. "But seriously, where'd you get your name?"

"My parents." I said, letting my exasperation creep into my voice. "Why do you care?" 

"No need to be so defensive about it." She smirked at me. "Okay, mystery shelved for now."

Then the professor arrived, and the lecture got started. I fully intended to listen intently and write all the notes, but about forty minutes in my attention started to wander, and I started stealing glances at Terezi. It wasn't that she was pretty, in any classical sense. She was thin, bony and pale, and her face was surprisingly narrow in spite of the wide grins. There was something vaguely reptilian to her, and the impression was only increased when she concentrated on listening and stared ahead blindly without moving her head.

But still, the way her lips twitched as she listened was pretty cute, I guess. 

Or whatever.

As the lecture ended, I quickly packed my things. She hadn't taken any notes as far as I could tell, so she just picked up her bag and turned to me. 

"You should come eat lunch with me." She said with wry smile. "Meat-free monday. Ergo, best pastas."

I grumbled under my breath, and considered briefly lying about having to go to some other class or lecture. "Pasta does sound good." I finally said.

"Great! We can meet a friend of mine there." She nodded fiercely, and grabbed hold of my arm when I passed her. We walked to the door together. "He's a bit of a grouch as well. You'll like him." 

It turns out Pyrope's friend wasn't a fellow student, but a computer technician that worked at the, uh, place of learning we both attended. His name was Sollux Captor. He was tall, thin and pasty, with tired eyes. He somehow managed to sink into his chair as if the entire world was pushing on his shoulders. 

"Keep it quiet. Got a shitstorm of a migraine." He said as his introduction. His sweater was blue and red in a sort of two-face kind of way, and his socks were mismatched. His glasses had the unfortunate effect of making his eyes seem huge. Next to all of this, his slight lisp wasn't anything much to pay attention to. 

I set down the small pile of enchiladas (veggie) I'd purchased, and Terezi started in on her pasta.

"Been listening, huh?" She asked him with more sympathy than I'd heard from her since we met that morning.

"Yeah, shit." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Not sure what they wanna tell me, if anything." 

I must have looked somewhat lost (not that I'm sure how she manages to always know), as Terezi gave me a look and said: "Sollux can hear voices in static." 

"Uh...huh." I said and stuffed my face to hide my incredulity. 

"Voices of the dead, usually." He said, conversationally. "Imminently and recently deceased." 

"Voices of the living too, then." I ventured between mouthfuls of beans, chili and tortilla. 

"Whatever. Fucks with my brain." He sipped his coffee. I quickly learned that Captor could keep going forever on a lean mixture of coffee and cheetos.

"But," Terezi said, "Did you find her?" 

"Eh, wasn't a big problem." He said. "Voices were pretty eager to tell me, for some reason." 

"Eager?" She asked, an edge of worry in her voice.

He gave a limp shrug. "I guess." 

I peered from one to the other, choked down my annoyance at being left out of the loop, and had another steaming mouthful of cheese-and-tortilla goodness. 

Terezi turned to me. "Right, so. Sollux and I hunt ghosts. It's kind of this whole big conspiracy."

I just stared for a few moment. Then I started humming the ghost busters theme. 

"Fuck you, it's not like that." Sollux snapped at me. 

"You hunt ghosts." I deadpanned.

Terezi giggled. "We hunt ghosts." 

"Are we talking Casper or, like, Supernatural-style creeps?" 

"Depends on the ghost." Terezi said. "Usually they're somewhere in between."

"You fucking kidding me? They're pretty much all awful." Sollux muttered. 

"Ok. So. You hunt ghosts." I said, trying to contain my sarcasm. "Everybody needs a hobby."

"Glad you agree!" She grinned. "So, what's your number?" 

Feeling I was about to be entrapped in something I wasn't entirely sure I wanted any part of, I hesitated. "Why?" 

"So I can call you." 

"You're talking like me now." 

"Must be your adorable influence. Number?" 

"Why?" 

She sighed theatrically and dangled an impaled pasta screw on the end of her fork. "We lost our third partner a while back."

"Wait, did he get-"

"Killed?" Sollux raised an eyebrow. "No, she didn't."

Terezi frowned. "She was always slightly arrogant, is all. Went to do her own thing. Felt she was doing all the heavy lifting, which, to be fair, she was."

I glanced at Sollux and he added: "She was a witch." 

I mouthed a somewhat confused "Oh" as if that explained everything, and then Terezi leaned closer to me, resting her hand on my knee. "Give. Me. Your. Number." She said. 

What can I say?

I gave her my number. 

***

Later that evening, I was leaning against one of the high marble pillars that lines the entrance to administration. It was a big neoclassical building, columns and everything, which I appreciated at that moment. It was cold and windy, even for September, and my breath frosted up slightly as I stood there. The pillar shielded me from the worst of the wind that came in from the wide open plaza in front of the administration building. 

At the centre of the plaza, there was this huge, ugly abstract sculpture, commemorating something or other. A bird, big and black, was seated on top of it, cleaning its wings and occasionally cawing hoarsely at the empty square.

Or, well. Mostly empty.

I heard Terezi and Sollux come trudging in my direction, muttering to each other. I went out to meet them, the black bird watching us all the while. 

"Hey." I said, hands hidden in my jacket pockets. "Lovely night for hunting ghosts." 

Captor peered at the cloudless sky, and nodded seriously. "They like cold."

Terezi on her part was rubbing her hands together, cane dangling from the strap around her left wrist. "That's great, but can we get into your car? You know, reunite with the heater and hash this out." 

Sollux nodded and lead Terezi back the way they'd come. I gave a slight shrug and followed, hands still in my pocket. The black bird cawed behind us as we left, and I felt a shiver down my spine.

"Kinda understand where Poe was coming from." I said.

Sollux let out a sigh and muttered to Terezi. "He's a poetry guy?"

I felt myself flush, but Terezi said: "Sollux, _I_ am a poetry person. It's an occupational hazard." 

"Fucking arts majors." He said, not muttering any longer, as he indicated a car parked along the street.

It was a piece of shit, really. I couldn't tell what held it together, the thin layer of green paint, the rust or the liberally applied duct tape. It creaked dangerously every time one of us shifted even slightly in our seats.

I peered out the window as we started off down the street, watching campus disappear into the night. 

"You're pretty quiet, Vantas." Terezi said.

"Wouldn't want to scare off the ghosts." I replied.

I could tell from the silence she was listening to me, weighing her responses inside her head. 

"You don't really think we're going to find anything tonight, do you?" The way she said it, it wasn't really a question. It was a statement of fact.

"Nope." I confirmed. "Should be fun to watch the two of you running around with your ghost-detector things, though."

"Speaking of that..." Sollux suddenly interjected, then turned on the radio and tuned it carefully to white noise. "This is how we work. I listen in on the voices and get us somewhere with a haunting. Got it so far?" 

"Uh-huh."

"Right. Terezi isn't a witch, don't get that idea at all, but she knows the rules." He glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. "Saltlines, mistletoe, true names; hell, anything supernatural that you don't really need to be made of magic to do, Terezi probably knows at least the basics. She does the exorcisms."

"Uh, right, ok." I said, slightly lost again. "So, what do I do?" 

"Well, tonight you lead me around." Terezi grinned widely. "Then we'll figure something out."

"Right." Sollux glanced at me again, as if weighing me, then focused on the road.

"How often do you actually find ghosts?" I asked.

"Oh, one of every three times, easily." Terezi bubbled from her seat. 

"I found her." Sollux suddenly said and made a sharp turn to the left. 

We pulled up next to a four floor apartment building, covered in scaffolding and surrounded by cranes and other construction vehicles. There was a hole through the wall towards the top left, and the entire building had the dilapidated appearance that comes from being prepared for demolishment. Cement, steel and not a single pane of glass. The plastic covers chattered against the metal skeleton of the scaffolding, like a corpse laid out before a funeral.

I was nervous as I went to help Terezi out of her seat, but I had to admit she looked the part as she let me lead her to the entrance. Her brow was furrowed like some of those quack ghost-hunters on TV, and I half expected her to start croaking out "It's here!" or something pointlessly theatrical like that. She didn't, just sniffed at the air and then suddenly grinned at me.

"This is going to be fun." She said. 

I noticed a huge black bird landing on a swing set as we passed. It met my eyes and tilted its head slowly as we watched each other. Then it let out a loud caw which reverberated across the empty playground, through the frostbitten air. I could feel Terezi jump at the sound, but then she laughed out loud. 

"Quoth the Raven!" She cried and entered the building. Sollux followed, mumbling under his breath.

The hall we entered was naked concrete, floor, walls, and ceiling, and cold. The city'd probably hit the really tough sub-zero temperatures sometime later that night, but even that early it was still cold enough that I couldn't help but shiver as I led Terezi down the empty hall, our steps ringing out, the wind howling through the abandoned building. 

I have to admit, I still didn't believe we were going to find anything. While we climbed the stairs, carefully and one step a time, I felt myself regretting that I took the invitation. I could've been back in my room, reading or, well. Yeah, reading. I guess I didn't really do much, back then. That was probably a large part of why I accepted the invitation without expecting anything much in the first place.

Terezi stopped for a moment, and before I could ask her what was up she had started down another hallway, and then another. I lead her into what I guessed had once been a bedroom. The floor was stained dark and moldy and tattered wallpaper hang in clumps off the walls. 

"Do you know where you're going?" I asked her when she sat down on the floor and started unpacking her satchel bag.

"Vaguely." She responded, and started sprinkling salt in a circle around one of the dark stains on the ground. "Right. Salt. Ghosts can't pass a barrier of it. Spirits don't care though. Be careful." 

"Wait, spirits and ghosts are different?"

She paused, considered how to explain. "Do you know anything about animism?" 

"Uh. No." 

"Ok, so. I'll get you up to speed on that, but until then, yeah. Spirits and ghosts are different." 

I nodded slightly and left her to her preparations. She set things up at an impressive pace considering she couldn't see what she was doing. They'd apparently done this a lot.

I joined Sollux at one of the windowless holes in the wall.

"What?" He asked, peering at me.

"Nothing, relax." I looked out the window and could see the Boston skyline off in the distance. "How long have you been doing this?"

"Me? A couple of years." He said, then pointed at Terezi. "She's been at it for a bit less, but she's far better at that side of things than I ever was."

"It's a blindness perk. Increased sense of hearing and smell _and_ innate mastery of occult mysteries." She deadpanned while setting up some weird looking incense sticks.

I lowered my voice slightly. "So, you're the tracking expert and she handles exorcisms, right?"

He nodded cautiously. "That's about the size of it, yeah."

I peered into the small playground below, and thought I heard the sound of cawing. "Then what am I here for?" 

"Well, we have the skills to be able to find them and put them in the ground." He said. "But that's only when everything goes perfectly."

"What do you mean? What can go wrong?" 

He sighed heavily. "Sometimes a ghost is really old, and doesn't want to be exorcised. Sometimes what we thought was a ghost isn't. Sometimes there's a coven of witches leeching off the ghost's energies or its some werewolf tribe's ancestor or whatever." He trailed off for a while. "For that we need somebody with a little more oomph than a blind girl and a computer nerd with a migraine."

I just stared at him blankly. Eventually he sighed.

"Remember that witch we mentioned? She was our old oomph."

"And you want me to be your new, uh, oomph." 

He peered at me with an expression that told me he wasn't really expecting much, then forced a nod. "In technical terms, I'm the group's necromancer. Necro as in death, mancer as in latin divination magic or whatever."

"And Terezi?" 

"I'm an Advocate. Advocatus Spiritus, technically, but that's just alot of latin again." She said.

"There's a whole system for this sort of thing?" 

Terezi gave a weird sort of laugh. "There's several. We use what's called the Standard North American System. Started in Salem, as you'd probably expect. Europeans call it the 'Coven Style', I've heard. Assholes.

"The Necromancer is charged with finding the revenant. The Advocate then negotiates the terms of release, and conducts the exorcism. Your role would mainly be to fend off rival covens and other supernatural threats to our work."

"Do I get a fancy title?"

"Yeah, Miles. Spelled like the unit of distance, pronounced in two syllables." She glanced up from her work. "Do you think you'll manage?"

"Fuck you." I growled. "How is this all gonna work? I don't really feel like I've got much oomph as is." 

"We'll introduce you to a teacher. But, let's do this exorcism. I'm freezing my balls off." 

Sollux led me to one of the far corners of the room and Terezi settled into the salt circle. I wasn't particularly worried at this point; as I've said, I didn't really believe in any of this yet. I wasn't phased at the idea that I'd have to fight witches or werewolves; those didn't exist after all. At most it sounded like an adventure, like a round of D&D or some other role-playing game. At worst, it meant that Sollux and Terezi were crazy, which didn't bother me much in itself.

But when Terezi started in on her incantation, and the room was suddenly washed in a pale, blue light, I felt a cold sweat spread over my body. The smoke of incense rose in impossible zigzag patterns, and the increasingly violent breeze seemed powerless to disturb the grains of salt arranged in a circle around the blind girl chanting in a long dead language. I could hear voices emerging from the shadows, like bubbles rising out of tar, and glanced fearfully at Sollux, who was staring fixedly at Terezi. I whimpered as vaguely human shapes slid over the walls like orphaned shadows...

And then the Ghosts came.


	2. Lenore

I'd half expected them to come floating through the walls like something out of a cartoon, billowing white sheets and all, but I have to admit I didn't actually see them enter. I was watching a blind girl practice magic - _real_ magic - for the first time in my life, and my mind was sputtering to keep up with the whirlwind of emotions. One moment, I was trying to cope with my world view collapsing, and in the next the faint outlines of human shapes, smelling like wet dirt and graverot, tore through the last remnants of my scepticism.

I must have had a look on my face. "It's something else, huh?" Sollux whispered to me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and gave a stiff nod, jaw clenched with the effort of containing a sudden rush of emotions I couldn't quite place. I didn't trust myself to speak, all too aware that the moment I opened my mouth, I would collapse in a sobbing heap on the ground. 

They were standing in a semicircle around Terezi with their backs to the door. The one in the middle had long hair the colour of dust, and a gaunt face with sunken cheeks and empty eyes. The two flanking her were darker in tone, and gave me the distinct impression they were wearing suits: their hair was shorter, making it difficult to see on their blurred heads, but they stood taller than the grey lady, with arms folded behind their backs. 

Terezi made a show of loudly sniffing in their direction, and then said with her usual wry grin and a mock bow: "Always a pleasure to see you, milady." 

As Terezi spoke, a tinge of red spread through the ghost's ephemeral body. Her form became clearer, more delineated, as if she was turning, bit by bit, from red smoke into rusted iron. 

Shifting fitfully, like somebody wearing ill-fitting clothes, the red ghost lifted her blank eyes from Terezi. I felt a rush of adrenaline join everything else inside me as she fixed her eyes on Sollux and me.

"Hello, Sollux." Her voice was dead, never rising above its silent monotone, but there was something desperate under the surface.

Sollux' jaw tightened visibly. "Hey, AA." 

The room filled with a heavy silence as they watched each other. It felt unreal, standing here in a room with a ghost, and Sollux and Terezi's matter-of-fact acceptance only made it weirder. The sound of cawing from below reassured me I was still surrounded by reality, and I felt my confidence begin to creep back.

"Oi! no talking past the Advocate, miss Megido." Terezi snapped, breaking the silence, as she rose to her full height and leaned on her cane. 

The ghost, Megido, focused back on Terezi, towering over the shorter woman. "I have a business to run. What do you want, Pyrope?" 

"Far be it from me to interfere with local small businesses." Megido's face didn't even twitch, but Terezi still grinned like she'd scored a hit. "Oh, by the way, we're giving young Karkat here the tour. Say hi, Karkat!"

I waved awkwardly from my corner, but didn't say anything. Megido's eyes rested on me for a long moment, before she returned her attention to Terezi. 

"He's shy." She explained, shrugging in a way that was so casual it seemed practiced. "But you don't mind him being here, I hope?"

"I'm okay with it." She barely moved at all, except to speak.

"Great!" Terezi nodded ferociously, then continued. "Well, you've no doubt heard about Lalonde leaving us high and dry?" 

"I guess." She shot a glance at me, and I could almost feel her thinking the situation through.

"Right. She took most of our, uh, supplies with-"

"You're customers." Megido said in the voice of someone who'd solved a mildly amusing jigsaw puzzle. The Suit on her left produced an ephemeral notebook and pen, and watched Terezi silently.

"Uh. Yeah." The grin was losing some of its cockiness. "We need a batch of mistletoe, lunargentum tools, a sickle, and a length of gallow's rope." The Suit scratched soundlessly at his notebook as she spoke.

Megido glanced at me again. "And for him?" 

"Who?" 

"Uh, me, I think." I mumbled, beginning to recover from my earlier surprise.

Terezi's brow furrowed visibly. "He doesn't need anythin-"

"Pyrope, I've only met two people in this world with more powerful auras than this man." She fixed her eyes on me and gave a slight nod. "You didn't bring him tonight just to show him the dead walk."

The silence that followed was tense, but eventually Terezi made a sound somewhere between a groan and a snarl and said: "A grimoire for him."

Megido smiled faintly, the first open display of emotion since she'd entered the room, and nodded. 

She looked at me. "Any preferences as to your familiar?" 

"Uh."

"You're new. I understand." She pursed her lips in thought for a moment. "Psychopomp. We'll get you a Psychopomp." 

Terezi didn't seem to have any objections to that, but with my courage returning I was starting to be annoyed at how vaguely they were talking. "Which is?"

"Remember those spirits that aren't the same thing as ghosts?" 

"Those things that you didn't explain?" 

"Yes, those." Terezi gave a firm nod. "A familiar is one those bound to a physical object called a grimoire."

"Ok, so a spirit in a box?"

"Exactly. A Psychopomp is one of several kinds of spirit in a box."

"Why do I need a grimoire again?"

"Because the spirit in a box-"

"...Getting real old, now..."

"...will be the source of your oomph." She finished with the biggest shit-eating grin I'd ever seen. "Basically, your familiar will act as the battery powering your magic, in exchange for being bound in your grimoire."

"How does being bound help it?"

"Listen, cliff-notes version first. We're getting you a proper teacher for this stuff. This is an introduction."

I grumbled but didn't say anything. Megido watched the two of us with dispassionate awkwardness, and ventured a weak smile. "I'll have the wares delivered. Usual payment, Pyrope."

And just like that, Megido turned around with her two dark scribes and left the room. The pale blue glow faded and the shadows went quiet and dead. Terezi began methodologically disassembling her ritual area, and Sollux lit a cigarette and peered out the window into the dark front lawn below.

Like flicking a switch, mundanity rushed back into the room, a wash of concrete and cold, leaving me slightly dizzy. My legs felt like rubber, so I sat myself down, leaning against the naked wall.

"Ghosts are real." I said.

Terezi gave a short snort of laughter and nodded. "Ghosts are real."

I wasn't sure how she could be so relaxed about it, but decided not to repeat myself. 

"You get used to it." Sollux offered me a cigarette, which I took. The smoke in my lungs calmed me, somewhat.

"Who was she?"

Sollux turned back to the window, and I peered at Terezi, closing up her satchel bag with a furrowed brow.

"Her name is Aradia Megido." She said. "She used to be like us, but well, you know." She gave a helpless shrug of her shoulders.

"She's a procurement expert." Sollux said, his voice hard. "She knows some tricks that lets her get her hands on occult items that people like us need. Always had a knack for it, getting into old places."

"You seem to know each other."

Sollux went quiet, and Terezi gave an uneasy laugh. "We're repeat customers, what can I say."

There was something there, but I didn't want to dig. "Fair enough. Are all ghosts that lucid?"

Terezi's grin returned full force. "Not by a long shot. Spending your life learning about ghosts has some advantages. She knew all the tricks already. Most ghosts have to work their way up from nothing."

"What do you mean?" 

"Well." She paused, thinking. "You know how sometimes ghosts in stories are just a disembodied voice and other times they show up like transparent people and so on?"

"Uh, I guess."

"There are stages, Karkat. Different levels of power, of control." She hefted the weight of her satchel over her shoulder and stood, tapping her cane against the floor as if testing it. "Some ghosts can just barely make their voices heard. Others can make themselves visible, or interact physically with their environment."

Sollux took a last drag of his smoke and threw it out the window. "There're some pretty fucking scary critters at the top. Barely anything like the people they used to be." He scratched at his chin and started heading for the door. "That's why we're here."

I joined Terezi and she grabbed hold of my arm. I could feel her shivering, and I'm sure she could feel the same from me. The cold had settled over the city like a fine blanket, making the slight moisture on the concrete shimmer in snowflake patterned rime. It was a surreal sight, this desolate scene suddenly turning beautiful. 

Perhaps I was getting some perspective.

Together with the shared heat it made me begin to feel better about all this.

"Right, ok. So what about this grimoire thing?" 

"Listen, I want to tell you all I can, but let's get somewhere warmer." She said and hugged my arm closer for a moment. "Sollux, could you get us to a Starbucks or something?" 

"If you're buying, I can get us anywhere."

We exited the building, passing the now birdless swing set, creaking silently in the sickly light of the street lamps. 

"This is Dorchester, right?" I said, peering around.

"Yeah."

"Campus isn't that far, and I don't have a room-mate yet." I said. "If you want some cheaper coffee and expanded privacy. Since this is kind of this whole big conspiracy and everything." 

They looked at each other, or well, Sollux looked at Terezi and she looked like she was considering. Finally, Sollux gave an apathetic shrug, and slouched off towards the car. 

"Free coffee is my favourite." He said. 

 

***

 

Terezi loudly proclaimed her wish to flop down on my bed the moment she entered the room. After a brief argument, I'd led her to my bed and she had face-planted herself in it, commenting favorably on my duvet. I'd made them coffee, and offered it to them while feeling weirdly self-conscious. Terezi drank far too fast, repeatedly burning her tongue. Sollux was quiet, inspecting the room carefully. I felt like the subject at hand was too big to approach, and neither Terezi or Sollux took the initiative. For a while, we just sat there, sipping our coffee, Terezi dangling her feet over the edge of my bed and humming faintly to herself.

"How'd you end up with no room-mate?" Terezi suddenly asked, while Sollux sipped his coffee from the small table where I usually ate the cup noodles that were the main staple of my diet. 

"Eh, that's up to some administration people, probably." I shrugged, sipped my own coffee, and frowned at the taste. "I think there's a guy signed up to live here, but he's never shown up and they haven't gotten around to sending somebody else."

Terezi sat up in my creaking bed and looked serious all of a sudden. It wasn't a good look for her. "Alright. You had questions?"

Questions. Hell fucking yes, I did.

"What is it this teacher you're going to find me will teach me?" 

"Easy question to start with." She lay back down, bouncing slightly. "To be a warlock. That's basically a male witch, if you were wondering."

"Uh-huh. And what is the grimoire I'll be getting?"

"Not sure, could be anything. Knowing Megido it'll be something small and subtle enough that you can carry it around. She's nice like that." 

Small blessings.

"Ok, so a grimoire is a thing with a spirit inside it. Mine will be a psychopomp. What's that?"

"Psychopomps are spirits that are good at things to do with death. Handling ghosts, controlling darkness, that sort of thing. They're in every culture: Charon who sails the dead to Hades, Valkyries in Norse myths, Shinigami in Bleach, Anubis and owls and ravens and jackals, and who knows what else."

"Exciting. So, it'll teach me all those things you mentioned?"

"Well, it'll make it possible for you to learn to do those things." She clarified. "Zahhak will be the one who actually teaches you."

Sollux groaned from his chair, and took an impressive mouthful of his coffee. "Zahhak?" I asked.

"He's an asshole." She said, with the air of someone who'd just saved you a lot of trouble figuring that out for yourself. "But he's one of the only experienced warlocks around with a psychopomp for a familiar."

"Right. Back to basics." I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "I'm learning all this so I can fend off werewolves and whatnot, right?"

"And dragons, yes." 

Heckles rising. "And dragons." I conceded. "Is there much chance of that happening?"

"Oh yeah." She chuckled, watching the ceiling. "Ghosts are a pretty convenient source of magical power. Most are defenseless if you know a little bit of occult lore, but a soul is always brimming with energy."

"Didn't you say there were levels of power when it came to ghosts or whatever?" 

"Yeah, well. Most of them never work their way very far up the ladder."

"And they just become a convenient power-source for unscrupulous, uh, sorcerers and things?" 

"Essentially. Not all ghost hunters are in it to help the dead find rest." She nodded in my direction with a grin. "You're here to make sure _those_ people don't harm any of us."

I leaned against the window-sill, and gave my tired eyes a short rubbing. "Right. And spirits? How are they different from ghosts?"

"You know the difference between a tree's soul and a human's soul? It's that difference. Spirits are the souls of things, or ideas or concepts or dreams, sometimes. Ghosts are the souls of humans."

"The souls of dreams?" I said with every ounce of scorn I could muster. Terezi just cackled. 

Sollux finished his coffee, and fixed his eyes on me. "Right, that's enough questions, I think. You need some sleep, and maybe a few moments alone. Come on, TZ." He pulled on his jacket and was out the door almost before I could even wave him goodbye. 

Terezi crawled out of my bed, and stood for a moment listening. "Could you just say something so I can find you?" 

"Just anything?" I asked.

She shuffled over to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. She tilted her head as if she was looking me in the eyes, her dark red sunglasses gleaming slightly, and then she gave me a smile. Not another shit-eating grin, but the first real smile she ever gave me.

"You'll be fine, Karkat." She gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, and began tapping her way out of my room with her cane. "See you at lunch tomorrow?"

"S-sure." I stammered, and then she was gone. I could hear her slowly making her way down the stairs, but the sound faded quickly and soon I could hear Sollux' wreck of a car drive off into the frost-bitten September night. 

 

***

 

The next day dawned as crisply as the frozen dew clinging to the grass outside. When the sun came out, it began to thaw, leaving the entire world slick and slightly shiny, like it was covered in those cheap coupon magazines. It was an unremarkable day at first, excepting my new-found friends. 

I spent my morning and afternoon at soul-sucking lectures, and my lunch trading barbs with Sollux and exchanging favorite poems with Terezi. She had good taste, I decided, but then she had to, really. Poetry was her arena: where the novel was internal and silent, all about painting images, poetry was oral: it was meant to be spoken and heard. She made that point to me at our second lunch together, much more convincingly than I can possibly put it here.

Sorry, I'm getting side-tracked. That whole subject may be part of _my_ story, but it isn't part of _this_ story, except in a peripheral way.

The important thing is that when I arrived home at my room after an afternoon of lectures, I found a brown paper package tied with string standing on my small table. There was a note attached to it.

AA: t0 s0llux' future miles, as per 0ur agreement 0f yesterday night. y0ur grim0ire and y0ur familiar.

The handwriting was loopy and bizarre, but I shrugged it off and unwrapped the package, cutting the string with my one good knife.

Inside the package, I found the wicked, curved blade of a sickle, gleaming yellow in the electric light of my table lamp. Another note inside, this one printed, assured me the blade was cold-iron and therefore especially potent against the faerie folk, while the handle was of yew wood.

For the first few minutes, I inspected the sickle closely, ingraining every single minute whirl and grain of the wood in my mind. The edge was sharp, and the wood was oiled and smelled freshly; I could see the lines where the whetstone had been dragged along the iron. She'd probably had it sharpened and oiled just before packaging it; gotten it all ready to impress. As a work of art or craftsmanship, I could appreciate it.

In about five minutes, however, I was flailing around like an idiot in my room, alone, having pretend fights with werewolves and mummies with my cool, new sickle and, pending approval by the spirit ostensibly living inside it, potential spell-casting tool.

I flopped down on my bed, eventually, dug out my phone and flicked out the keypad.

KK: MY GRIMOIRE ARRIVED. NO SIGN OF THE FAMILIAR YET. AM I MEANT TO HEAR IT IN MY HEAD OR SOMETHING?  
TZ: 1T SHOULD TURN UP 3V3NTU4LLY. WH4TS W1TH TH3 C4PS >:?  
KK: MY QUESTION IS THE SAME, BUT WITH THE ADDED BONUS OF WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK ARE THE NUMBERS ALL ABOUT?   
TZ: TRY1NG TO 3XPR3SS MY P3RSON4L1TY 1N TH3 FORM OF MY WR1T1NG  
KK: IS THAT A REAL THING?   
TZ: NO DOOFUS MY C4PS 1 3 4ND 4 K3YS 4R3 BROK3N  
TZ: BUT 1T 1S K1ND OF COOL 1 GU3SS  
KK: OH, RIGHT. SAME WITH THE CAPS ON MY SIDE.   
TZ: 4M4Z1NG >:P  
TZ: 4NYW4Y 1'M NOT SUR3 HOW TH3 PSYCHOPOMP G3TS 1N TOUCH W1TH YOU  
TZ: YOU F1GUR3 1T OUT  
KK: FINE. FUCKING FINE. I WAS AN IDIOT TO EXPECT ANY HELP FROM YOU OR THE BIFURCATED MIGRAINE FREAK TO FIND MY FEET IN THIS PROFESSION.   
TZ: WH1N3R  
TZ: 4LSO W3 H4V3 PL4NN3D 4 M33T1NG W1TH Z4HH4K TOMORROW  
TZ: TRY TO F1GUR3 OUT TH3 B4S1CS BY TH3N  
TZ: 4ND W1TH TH4T 1 MUST D3P4RT  
KK: URGH. FINE. SEE YOU AROUND, PYROPE. 

I sat there for a while holding the sickle in my hands. I wondered whether I should try talking to it, but there are certain things I was still too proud to do. It didn't matter that the world was full of ghouls and ghosts and creepies and crawlies; a Vantas does not talk to himself.

I went to bed with the sinking feeling that I wouldn't manage to figure it out before the meeting. I imagined him asking me to demonstrate what I knew so far, and couldn't decide whether I wanted him to be angry or amused at my ignorance. I briefly dreaded that he might refuse to teach me, and that Sollux and Terezi would abandon me to find somebody else to be their third man. The anxiety settled over me, like a shadow cast by a carrion bird. I slowly dozed off, clutching the sickle close to my chest. 

My dreams fluttered with dark wings, and the crowing cries of 'Nevermore!'


End file.
